The deck has an admitted bad matchup against Dredge, which may be a problem for it as the season wears on. In his article Monday, Chapin said that the changes he would make are:
Chapin said that because he decided to say screw it when it comes to Dredge. He just increases his percentage against everyone else, which isn't a bad idea if you can reasonably expect very little Dredge.
His exact words: "In retrospect, I would probably cut the Watery Grave, Jailer, and a Crypt. For a Snow-Island, another Hurkyl’s, and another card for the mirror, like EE or Threads.
No one played Dredge, and besides, we would probably have trouble with it anyway, so the hell with it. Go 2-0 and you won’t have to worry about facing Dredge."
The choice of words may be shortsighted in his underestimation of Dredge, but that's the decision he made on it.
I wonder if Echoing Truth would be a fun option against all those Zombies.
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Don't read anything LaPille. Your brain will thank you later. ----> VICTORY!
I'm not sure what Pat said is right, though. Dredge proved to be extremely powerful last weekend, and I think people will start playing it more. Especially because of its solid Doran matchup.
But, if the Crypt and Jailer are not improving the MU that much, like not beyond 35/65 for the average player, Nix 'em.
Echoing Truth would be decent against dredge but not a perfect solution. The deck has at least 3 commonly used angles of attack. Bridge From Below, Sutured Ghoul, and Ichorid. Echoing Truth would be great against Bridge and Ghoul and really mediocre against Ichorid.
The point against dredge is that 2-3 cards in the SB aren't going to make a difference.
You need massive hate to hope and face it.
People that played at the US PTQs underestimated it and only played things like 4 Leyline and called it a day against Dredge, but this is just not the case.
You need at least 6+ cards (say, 4 leyline then 2 crypts/3gaddock/3 jailer) to have a fighting chance because they can easily play around your GY hate if it's too few, but since this deck don't have the space in the SB you can't afford to run that much hate, hence the cutting of the Crypts and jailer.
Not to mention he's not even running any Crypt nor Trinket Mage to find them, so he really gave up on the MU.
Dredge will always be in the meta-dance. Either you SB 6-8 (w/a game 1 chance like fanatic/STE, trinket-> crypt, fast t.west into crypt, living wish into teeg/jailer etc) or you ignore it.
And the dredge players run the gamble of overwhelming hate or none at all.
It's really a luck/skill being able to read the meta and rewards preparation (in terms of knowing your meta) rather than playing skill as much as anything.
If you mis-read, you're either woefully underwhelming against dredge or 2/3's of other match ups.
Something like that, more likely.
Seriously, in such an open meta you can hardly T8 unless you have decent MUs all round and can afford to SB 6-8 cards for Dredge (like Affinity and Doran can do) or get really lucky and avoid those couple of MUs that are unwinnable for your deck.
It's a pretty crappy format with such a busted mechanic to force people into THAT much hate for a single deck but it's what Wizard gave us, so thanks, I guess...
That said, IMO giving up isn't the way to go, but putting together a serious SB by cutting the Wishes (making space for Dredge and Affinity hate by cutting the Wish-board) could be a good starting point in making the deck's bad MUs a bit better.
SBing 3 Crypts and 3-4 Jailers instead than the Wish board targets then something like 3-4 Kataki for Affinity along with the Grips.
Ghostly Prison is another card that could help against Dredge aswell as in other MUs like Affinity, Gobbos and the various Kird Ape decks which play very few lands.
That would make some space MD for stuff like Trinket Mage, Confidant, Snare, Venser or whatever you might like.
No... your meta is the luck that you can best prepare for - people will play what they will play. You can alter your chances best by preparing for your meta. Trying to mise a SB'ing strategy for pairings is a suboptimal approach. You give yourself the best chance by getting as much information as you can - putting yourself in best position to win.
Pairings are irrelevant if no one turns up with dredge.
The format in the abstract is open, yes. The format in terms of what people in each area play - country wise, state wise, region wise - is entirely different.
N.E USA doesn't play Tron for instance. And apparently no dredge either. It doesn't matter what the format/pairings are... people within the specific meta are not playing X deck, Y deck etc.
Find out what people play/like to play/tend to play and don't worry about random pairings. You have no control over that variable.
I think you're completely missing why Chapin removed the Trinket Mage package in the first place. His deck is a smoother, less clunky/tricky version or Chase Rare Control/Counter Top Goyf and clearly he considers Living Wish to be superior to a Trinket Mage package.
Maindecking echoing truth and trinket mage is a good idea in order to beat some dredge variations on game 1, but that's also good against a lot of matchups.
Dredge is by no way a mechanic too busted. It's the only mechanic that makes pedantic learnings useful! ever! Seriously, all the cards in that are kinda janky on their own. You need them to be together to work, this strongly limits the kind of things you can do. There are tons of great hosers against Dredge. It's like affinity back then. It's a very strong deck, but the hate focusing on it makes it more political than real as for which deck is the strongest.
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The interesting thing about us legacy players is that we consider Force of Will, Dark Ritual, Blood Moon, Tarmogoyf and Swords to Plowshare to be fair.
Can see and respect the point made by Chapin, but in my mind this deck still shouldn't seemingly "forfiet" its defences against dredge just to improve its other matchups. I can't see what matchups are necessarily particularly difficult for this deck other than dredge and maybe the mirror/GBUcountertopgoyf as the living wish offers awesome versatility vs the entire meta. However the context of being a pro and the context of someone are obviously different so i can see why Chapin has made his choices and why its more relevant for him than, say, me.
why not? Dredge is not a deck that just shows up, it is a deck that shows up in numbers or doesn't show up at all. When a deck has such a great matchup (70/30 in dredges favor, even after SB) that the matchup is basically unwinnable, it is just better to go ahead and make all you other matchups great, rather than good.
Then don't play it.
The matchup is not that good against anything involving an early dark confidant either
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The interesting thing about us legacy players is that we consider Force of Will, Dark Ritual, Blood Moon, Tarmogoyf and Swords to Plowshare to be fair.
meh, dark confidant can be killed with Engineered Explosives (if you have it) or stolen by wishing for Sower of Temptation. its also one of the easiest spells for you to counter with counterbalance or spell snare. i mean, we all know how good confidant is and he will bury you under card advantage if it sticks around for too many turns but its not like you don't have plenty of game against Bob. If this deck couldn't beat a turn 2 Dark Confidant it wouldn't be much of a deck.
1. Your philosophy of prepation means nothing is just flawed. I don't know how to respond to that in any other way. You can't predict randoms true and yes... nearly every archetype will be represented singularly at the least I suppose. Obviously necessary to worry about the small %'s. Paretto's Principle is relevant here.
The majority of your matches will come from a small % of match ups. Attempting to SB against them all is pointless. Prioritise and prepare.
2. Clearly that t8 has decks that have ideal match ups against a Doran dominated (and hence influenced) field. Kudos to whoever managed to get Domain Zoo to t8. Even more to Flow Rock player.
3. The obvious was stated as necessary. Living Wish, at the moment, is a stronger strategy than Trinket Mage against the metagame. Your advice is basically to undo the work Chapin put into the Counter-Top skeleton to to move it away from Fortier.dec to NLB. Lack of Dark Confidant is perhaps a qu.mark.
LSV has moved hierarchs into the MD. Trinket Mage is not either of those two though. You can wish for it, that's plenty.
How is Trinket Mage faster than Living Wish against dredge... ? This doesn't make sense. A 3 cost versus a 2 cost, each build has access to Chrome Mox. There is no speed difference.
In answer to your question. Resolve Jailer. No more dredging/reanimating. The blue deck protects said Jailer. Game over.
Now, as everyone knows... there's only 3 mox, 3 wish and 2 crypt to board in. So if you don't get the cards you don't get the cards. Once again, the metagame gamble. However considering the entire meta basically spins around whether or not dredge is popular, it's hardly a right/wrong judgement born out of a distaste for Living Wish and the resultant SB structure.
The deck is stronger because of Living Wish. It accomplishes more than Trinket Mage in both pre and post SB'd games.
Yixlid Jailer is nearly useless against the most recent generation of Dredge decks. Most of these decks include 3-4 Darkblast in the maindeck because of the numerous creatures that they need to be able to remove with it before it going off (Yixlid Jailer, Mogg Fanatic or similar creatures, and Gaddock Teeg are the 3 most relevant).
Jailer should not be used as a countermeasure against Dredge except in the very rare cases where it is the only card available. It is a very poor wish target and Patrick Chapin himself acknowledged this and cut the card.
Trinket Mage for Tormod's Crypt is by far the best solution and it is even viable in game 1. Better still is that Crypt can be recurred with Academy Ruins which basically locks the Dredge deck out of the game. The blue deck definitely has late game inevitability over dredge if you run these cards and the matchup becomes a race (Dredge trying to go off before the lockdown engine is assembled).
The other approach is the one that Chapin decided to go with, which is to not bother diluting the deck with the Trinket/Crypt/Ruins engine that is necessary to beat dredge and just run nothing. You literally can't beat dredge at all in that case, but sometimes its acceptable to take the metagame gamble.
Well, I NEVER said it, so you obviously don't know what to answer :rofl:Did I say the opposite?
You're just being argumentative for the sake of it, I said that the deck needs to prepare for the bad MUs and, since they're few and far between (Dredge and Affinity) I'd say I'd much rather have more solid MUs all round without Living Wish and then attempt to SB PROPERLY to beat those MUs.I couldn't resist to laugh about this one, seriously.
Trinket mage is 3 mana, fetch a Crypt, play it, stall them till they find a Needle and possibly counter/bounce it when needed.
Living Wish is 4 mana (if you know how to play the deck and your opponent isn't a scrub) to fetch + play the Jailer, which will more likely than not eat a Darkblast (barring godhands of turn 1 CBalance, turn 2 top + counterspell then counter all of their 1 drops).Yeh right, on turn 3-4 how are you supposed to protect the Jailer, barring the above mentioned godhand?
Force of Will?
Pact of Negation?
Plus, it's a matter of numbers.
3 Trinket Mages + 2-3 Crypts = 5-6
3 Living Wishes = 3
Having 5 or more outs in a bad MU sounds FAR better than 3.
But that might just be me :rolleyes:You can cut on superfluous Tops with Trinket, making space for more utility.
Having Crypts or Needles MD and the opportunity to fetch them makes for a far better plan than Wishing for something to solve the problems, mainly because having them MD makes you actually able to FIND them while playing, even without Trinkets while you can't really get that Hierarch/Howler/Gaddock if they discard/counter your Wish...
They fetch different solutions for different problems, tho, so a direct comparison isn't exactly possible.
To compare them you need to see in which games they help more: think how bad is the MU against Ideal and Kird Ape aggro (where Wish actually helps) and how bad the MU against Affinity and Dredge is, where Trinket helps: fetching Crypt or Needle on Plating is a HUGE help, usually more than Kataki that, by the time you Wish + play will usually be solved on your EoT if it resolves at all.
Then make your judgment and play the deck accordingly.
Chapin did well because he's one of the best player in the worlds, granted, but stop praising WHATEVER he says as pure gold, nice idea and all, but it CAN be tweaked. A lot.
I agree, my friend is testing the version with wishes and mages, and has great game with both of them, and it still runs really smooth.
I don't understand the inclusion of Snow-Covered Island, he has no Snow cards, and it seems it'd be better to replace it with Seat of the Synod for Thirst for Knowledge, unless he's really trying to bluff Snow something.
He's trying to bluff that he is playing Gifts Rock. Since they play snow-covered lands to gifts out (so that they can have 2 islands in the gifts pile).
I agree, my friend is testing the version with wishes and mages, and has great game with both of them, and it still runs really smooth.
I agree that Trinket Mage as an addition to Living Wish is strong, and increases consistency in some areas.
Ronaoke (sp?) winner had a solid list IMO.
I couldn't resist to laugh about this one, seriously.
Trinket mage is 3 mana, fetch a Crypt, play it, stall them till they find a Needle and possibly counter/bounce it when needed.
Living Wish is 4 mana (if you know how to play the deck and your opponent isn't a scrub) to fetch + play the Jailer, which will more likely than not eat a Darkblast (barring godhands of turn 1 CBalance, turn 2 top + counterspell then counter all of their 1 drops).
So the dredge player always has the Darkblast then... ?
And please explain how t2 Living Wish (or t1) into t3 or t2 Yixlid Jailer is faster than t2 or t3 Trinket Mage + Tormod's Crypt... ?
Hell, go Living Wish into Trinket Mage and get the Crypt that way. Trinket Mage is still not providing an advantage here, it's keeping pace.
The dredge player realistically has one turn to resolve the Darkblast and hope that NLB does nothing else during the game nor that Jailer's death removes any Bridge's for the fast kill.
Plus, it's a matter of numbers.
3 Trinket Mages + 2-3 Crypts = 5-6
3 Living Wishes = 3
Having 5 or more outs in a bad MU sounds FAR better than 3.
But that might just be me
3 Living Wish + 2 Tormod's Crypts = 5... ?
Leaving out information when rebutting an argument doesn't make you correct.
Regardless, we clearly differ in opinion. Agreeing to disagree should have been reached some time ago, better late than never.
If that white deck that Flores made ever gets popular we will be needing to run pithing needles. Since thats one of the few ways we can actualy stop martyr. Problem with that is that you also need Teeg on the field to stop them from just blowing everything up...
Or black needs to be used for toughtseizes or something simular.
Azorious Guildmage solves that problem quite well, I shouldn't need to explain why. And he can be wished for, further gaining it's status as a potetntially useful card. Of course, this is hypothetical, based on the idea that that deck could gain popularity. Which is unlikely IMO.
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for the dredge match-up, would it be possible to splash slightly more black in order to put in a CE/extripate package? something like that would not only take a lot out of dredge (remove bridges, ichroids, etc.), but they're good cards that can take care of several problems. (not to mention extripate can't be countered.)
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I am just beginning to play living wish in my deck.
Against affinity
What is the optimal turn to cast the living wish for kataki after turn 1 also assuming you have the lands to cast him.
is it turn 2 or turn 4?
That depends on the gamestate really. But if you cast Living Wish on turn 2 you can play Kataki on turn 3. If you play Living wish on turn 4 you can cast Kataki on turn 4, so that's a turn slower. But it's the gamestate that should determine your lines of play, don't hold on to a fixed set of rules about how you are going to play.
QFT. While there are usually more optimal turns to play spells, It always depends on what your opponent is doing. If your opponent has a slow affinity start, you should have time to set things up, if not, you should rush it out there ASAP.
The deck shouldn't be running wish anyway. I don't know why anyone would stray off of luis' list by more than 2-3 cards. He pretty much gets it right everytime, and I don't see how this deck is the exception.
The deck shouldn't be running wish anyway. I don't know why anyone would stray off of luis' list by more than 2-3 cards. He pretty much gets it right everytime, and I don't see how this deck is the exception.
so what's LSV's decklist? the same that lapille posted in his last article that he said he got from Gerry Thompson?
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2 Engineered Explosives
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Vedalken Shackles
3 Counterbalance
4 Counterspell
2 Cryptic Command
2 Repeal
4 Thirst For Knowledge
3 Living Wish
4 Ponder
7 Snow-covered Island
3 Breeding Pool
4 Flooded Strand
1 Hallowed Fountain
4 Polluted Delta
1 Watery Grave
1 Academy Ruins
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Indrik Stomphowler
1 Loxodon Hierarch
1 Meddling Mage
1 Trinket Mage
1 Yixlid Jailer
2 Threads Of Disloyalty
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Krosan Grip
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Academy Ruins
The deck has an admitted bad matchup against Dredge, which may be a problem for it as the season wears on. In his article Monday, Chapin said that the changes he would make are:
-1 Water Grave (main)
-1 Yixlid Jailer (sb)
-1 Tormod's Crypt (sb)
+1 Snow Island (main)
+1 Hurkyl's Recall (sb)
+1 Threads or Explosives (sb)
Of course, he said that right before admitting that the Dredge matchup was the pits, so other changes will need to be considered.
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His exact words: "In retrospect, I would probably cut the Watery Grave, Jailer, and a Crypt. For a Snow-Island, another Hurkyl’s, and another card for the mirror, like EE or Threads.
No one played Dredge, and besides, we would probably have trouble with it anyway, so the hell with it. Go 2-0 and you won’t have to worry about facing Dredge."
The choice of words may be shortsighted in his underestimation of Dredge, but that's the decision he made on it.
I wonder if Echoing Truth would be a fun option against all those Zombies.
Some people just love Jace a little too much
I'm not sure what Pat said is right, though. Dredge proved to be extremely powerful last weekend, and I think people will start playing it more. Especially because of its solid Doran matchup.
But, if the Crypt and Jailer are not improving the MU that much, like not beyond 35/65 for the average player, Nix 'em.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=378565
Akroma dosen't have pro blue.
Well, the good one dosen't which is what they play
Some people just love Jace a little too much
Dredge will always be in the meta-dance. Either you SB 6-8 (w/a game 1 chance like fanatic/STE, trinket-> crypt, fast t.west into crypt, living wish into teeg/jailer etc) or you ignore it.
And the dredge players run the gamble of overwhelming hate or none at all.
It's really a luck/skill being able to read the meta and rewards preparation (in terms of knowing your meta) rather than playing skill as much as anything.
If you mis-read, you're either woefully underwhelming against dredge or 2/3's of other match ups.
Make the call is basically all it is.
-TEAM REVOLUTION
No... your meta is the luck that you can best prepare for - people will play what they will play. You can alter your chances best by preparing for your meta. Trying to mise a SB'ing strategy for pairings is a suboptimal approach. You give yourself the best chance by getting as much information as you can - putting yourself in best position to win.
Pairings are irrelevant if no one turns up with dredge.
The format in the abstract is open, yes. The format in terms of what people in each area play - country wise, state wise, region wise - is entirely different.
N.E USA doesn't play Tron for instance. And apparently no dredge either. It doesn't matter what the format/pairings are... people within the specific meta are not playing X deck, Y deck etc.
Find out what people play/like to play/tend to play and don't worry about random pairings. You have no control over that variable.
I think you're completely missing why Chapin removed the Trinket Mage package in the first place. His deck is a smoother, less clunky/tricky version or Chase Rare Control/Counter Top Goyf and clearly he considers Living Wish to be superior to a Trinket Mage package.
-TEAM REVOLUTION
Dredge is by no way a mechanic too busted. It's the only mechanic that makes pedantic learnings useful! ever! Seriously, all the cards in that are kinda janky on their own. You need them to be together to work, this strongly limits the kind of things you can do. There are tons of great hosers against Dredge. It's like affinity back then. It's a very strong deck, but the hate focusing on it makes it more political than real as for which deck is the strongest.
why not? Dredge is not a deck that just shows up, it is a deck that shows up in numbers or doesn't show up at all. When a deck has such a great matchup (70/30 in dredges favor, even after SB) that the matchup is basically unwinnable, it is just better to go ahead and make all you other matchups great, rather than good.
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The matchup is not that good against anything involving an early dark confidant either
The majority of your matches will come from a small % of match ups. Attempting to SB against them all is pointless. Prioritise and prepare.
2. Clearly that t8 has decks that have ideal match ups against a Doran dominated (and hence influenced) field. Kudos to whoever managed to get Domain Zoo to t8. Even more to Flow Rock player.
3. The obvious was stated as necessary. Living Wish, at the moment, is a stronger strategy than Trinket Mage against the metagame. Your advice is basically to undo the work Chapin put into the Counter-Top skeleton to to move it away from Fortier.dec to NLB. Lack of Dark Confidant is perhaps a qu.mark.
LSV has moved hierarchs into the MD. Trinket Mage is not either of those two though. You can wish for it, that's plenty.
How is Trinket Mage faster than Living Wish against dredge... ? This doesn't make sense. A 3 cost versus a 2 cost, each build has access to Chrome Mox. There is no speed difference.
In answer to your question. Resolve Jailer. No more dredging/reanimating. The blue deck protects said Jailer. Game over.
Now, as everyone knows... there's only 3 mox, 3 wish and 2 crypt to board in. So if you don't get the cards you don't get the cards. Once again, the metagame gamble. However considering the entire meta basically spins around whether or not dredge is popular, it's hardly a right/wrong judgement born out of a distaste for Living Wish and the resultant SB structure.
The deck is stronger because of Living Wish. It accomplishes more than Trinket Mage in both pre and post SB'd games.
-TEAM REVOLUTION
Jailer should not be used as a countermeasure against Dredge except in the very rare cases where it is the only card available. It is a very poor wish target and Patrick Chapin himself acknowledged this and cut the card.
Trinket Mage for Tormod's Crypt is by far the best solution and it is even viable in game 1. Better still is that Crypt can be recurred with Academy Ruins which basically locks the Dredge deck out of the game. The blue deck definitely has late game inevitability over dredge if you run these cards and the matchup becomes a race (Dredge trying to go off before the lockdown engine is assembled).
The other approach is the one that Chapin decided to go with, which is to not bother diluting the deck with the Trinket/Crypt/Ruins engine that is necessary to beat dredge and just run nothing. You literally can't beat dredge at all in that case, but sometimes its acceptable to take the metagame gamble.
I agree, my friend is testing the version with wishes and mages, and has great game with both of them, and it still runs really smooth.
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I agree that Trinket Mage as an addition to Living Wish is strong, and increases consistency in some areas.
Ronaoke (sp?) winner had a solid list IMO.
So the dredge player always has the Darkblast then... ?
And please explain how t2 Living Wish (or t1) into t3 or t2 Yixlid Jailer is faster than t2 or t3 Trinket Mage + Tormod's Crypt... ?
Hell, go Living Wish into Trinket Mage and get the Crypt that way. Trinket Mage is still not providing an advantage here, it's keeping pace.
The dredge player realistically has one turn to resolve the Darkblast and hope that NLB does nothing else during the game nor that Jailer's death removes any Bridge's for the fast kill.
3 Living Wish + 2 Tormod's Crypts = 5... ?
Leaving out information when rebutting an argument doesn't make you correct.
Regardless, we clearly differ in opinion. Agreeing to disagree should have been reached some time ago, better late than never.
-TEAM REVOLUTION
Or black needs to be used for toughtseizes or something simular.
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Against affinity
What is the optimal turn to cast the living wish for kataki after turn 1 also assuming you have the lands to cast him.
is it turn 2 or turn 4?
QFT. While there are usually more optimal turns to play spells, It always depends on what your opponent is doing. If your opponent has a slow affinity start, you should have time to set things up, if not, you should rush it out there ASAP.
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so what's LSV's decklist? the same that lapille posted in his last article that he said he got from Gerry Thompson?